Kirk Russell - Dead Game

“So I’m supposed to go back to San Francisco tonight?”

“No, you’re already here. I figured you and I could go see my fishing friend, and maybe we can grill some halibut or bass tonight. That sound okay?”

She was quiet too long. She sensed some trick in all this, or maybe it bored her to think about riding around with him and picking up fish from his friend. But then she nodded.

They ended up grilling hamburgers instead of halibut, and he left Maria and Katherine talking near the fireplace, the light of the fire catching their profiles. From the deck he called in and asked dispatch to help him check three hang-up calls on his cell, numbers he didn’t recognize, two from the same spot.

“What you’ve got there are pay phone booths. The two that are the same are in Fresno. The next one is in Sacramento.”

“Thanks.”

The first calls were late this morning, ten minutes apart. The third must have come when he was on the mountain with Maria. A fourth came later that night after he was in bed with Katherine. She moved silently against him, only the rustle of sheets making any noise as her hand found his shoulder and moved across his chest, touched his face, his lips before sliding down to his groin and taking him in her hand. He turned, and the smooth warm skin of her belly was against him. She pulled him on top of her and her arms wrapped tight around his back, and later she laid her face on his chest and quietly wept for the loss of a dream of the way life might have been. It all came back to Maria. She was no longer the little girl who’d been Katherine’s best friend in the years after her first husband abandoned them.

Late in the night the phone rang, and he walked down the hallway and outside with his cell phone. He slid the deck door shut, speaking quietly, wondering if the FBI was listening in.

“A lot of officers looked for you that night.”

“I had to do what I did.”

“Sure, and I know you must be very sorry for what you had to do to me.”

“I am sorry, but the FBI promised to get my son for me and now they say they can’t. Everything has happened because of that.”

“When did they promise to get your son for you?”

“A couple of years ago, and I’m supposed to help them get closer to my ex. They’d like to lock him up for a long time.”

“Where are you now?”

There was a hollowness to her voice that made him think she was in a pay phone.

“I’m in California. I’m not far from the delta, but I really am going to disappear, if they don’t arrest me first. Do you want to meet me tomorrow? I really do care about the poaching and that’s why I came to you in the first place. I know what they’re doing and what their plans are. I wanted you to bust them. If you don’t meet with me now, I’m afraid you might not get the chance.”

“Why not tell me what you know over the phone? Why make a game out of meeting you?”

“Because they’re probably listening to this conversation.”

“Who is?”

“The FBI. I can meet you tomorrow. I can tell you where the caviar gets moved around. I can meet you where we met that first time.”

“Okay, I’ll meet you there.”

He sat with the phone in his hands after hanging up. Agreeing to meet her was an impulsive move, and he should call Ehrmann. They’d been backed off any contact with her when they followed her, yet this was different. She’d called him. She’d made the contact. He made coffee and thought it over, read the papers, watched the dawn, and decided not to tell anyone on his team, not to jeopardize anyone’s career.

Just before 10:00 he drove into the delta, looped around Sherman Island, backtracked, worked his way east, then cut across a levee island and came in the back way to the slough. He parked and did the rest on foot, keeping an eye on the vineyard roads as he walked toward the meeting spot. Across the flat water the skyline of Sacramento was visible, pale red-gold in the early light, the slough calm, grass and reeds yellowed and burned with fall. He rounded the next turn and saw her standing near the big oak she’d been at the first time. Her face had lost weight and left her gaunt looking.

“For years it’s been the only way he’ll let me see my son or talk to him.”

“The only way who will?”

“Alex, my ex-husband. He’s a criminal, and I deliver things for him. Like fly to LA, pick up a stolen car, and drive it to Las Vegas or someplace.”

“Someplace like Weisson’s Auto.”

“How do you know that?”

“By following the sturgeon.” He tried to read her eyes, couldn’t tell if she was lying or not. “Are you saying you help his criminal network and in return he lets you communicate with your son?”

She nodded.

“Where is he now?”

“He moves around the world. He has a big yacht in the Med and a house in Switzerland and lots of different names.”

“Does he ever come here?”

“They say he does.”

“Did you ever go to the police?”

“Yes, and to the State Department. They said they’d work on it through channels and referred my case to the FBI. The FBI came to see me and interviewed me for two days. They’re very interested in my ex. He’s wanted for a lot of different types of crimes. He sells stolen weapons from the Soviet Union and other places. They told me about all the things he does and what I’m supposed to listen for. I speak Russian. I was a Russian; I am a Russian. His guys all know that. They all knew I was married to Alex once and they all knew the deal. They figured I wouldn’t risk screwing it up.”

“Then the FBI showed up.”

“That’s right, and they wanted me to keep on making deliveries and whatever Alex’s people wanted, and they promised they would work with the Russians, find my son and bring him here.”

“Last night you made it sound like the FBI came to you with the idea that you start doing deliveries for Karsov. Now you’re telling me the deal was already in place. Which is the truth?”

“I had already made a deal.”

“And they discovered what was going on and approached you.”

She nodded.

“And now they’ve told you they can’t get your son back, so in your mind the deal is off, but the problem is they already had the earlier evidence on you. What they’d gathered before they sanctioned your dealing with Karsov.”

She nodded again.

“They don’t usually back out of deals.”

“They backed out of this one. For a long time they said they were looking for him and when I first showed the emails I sent to him and the ones I got back, they were sure they would find him. But they didn’t and after the first year they said the emails were bounced around the world and they didn’t even know if he was in Ukraine. They thought he might be in Switzerland. They kept making me promises, but I could tell they weren’t trying very hard anymore. They said they weren’t sure they’d be able to get him. When they said they probably wouldn’t be able to and I was still lucky because they could have arrested me instead of making a deal, I guess something snapped in me. That’s when I decided I was done acting like a criminal. I decided to fake the abduction so the FBI would think something had happened to me. They knew I’d gotten involved with Fish and Game because Alex’s guys wanted me to. Then I got the idea it was the way I could fool everybody and disappear.”

“Then why didn’t you?”

“Because it didn’t work out like I hoped. I didn’t fool anybody.”

“You fooled me. You had me racing to that fishing access. I would have gone a long time looking for you.” She reached and touched him.

“They’re going to make the sturgeon business work, so they’re learning all about Fish and Game. They want to find out where the wardens live.”